70-year old Polish long-distance kayaker Aleksander Doba has embarked on a third attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a kayak, departing New York City for Portugal, on a three-month long, 3000 . He is currently working on two books, Home Works and Cuba. He last shot a smoke sauna in Estonia for the magazine.Correction: March 23, 2018 An earlier version of this article misstated the timing of Piotr Chmielinskis navigation of the Amazon. We watched them in his living room together with Gabriela. Then she sat me down at a nearby restaurant, ordered pierogies and borscht and told me a joke. But she was charmed by his impish streak his stories of smuggling ski boots back from East Germany by walking across the border in them; the beard he grew over a summer holiday, so he could return to university and his mandatory military training as the only soldier in Poland with facial hair. What he did not say, what was left hanging in the air, was that it would not be a big problem for him to go into the sea and die. On February 22, Aleksander Doba made the last few strides to the top of Kilimanjaro, a pleased 74-year-old man, waving to fellow climbers with his envy-inducing muscular arms, a smile beaming from behind the curls of a wild beard. In both cases, they held me at gunpoint with rifles, pistols, and machetes. But two months into the voyage, almost dead center in the North Atlantic, Dobas satellite phone stopped working, rendering him unable to communicate for 47 days. My decision to continue didnt take longer than a few seconds.. My phone exploded with hysterical texts from home. Still, Doba refused. On the island, after 143 days at sea, Doba could hardly walk, and by the time he was ready to return to the Atlantic, it was late March, and the weather was turning bad. His 12,417 kilometer journey began in Lisbon on October 5, 2013 and ended in Florida on April 17, 2014. When Doba finally said, I will go on the North Atlantic, I said, I will not participate in this, Arminski told me. Heres the technology that helped scientists find itand what it may have been used for. She did not want to spend her life stressed, waiting for his return. The idea was to do the crossing unsupported. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean westward under his own power. The huge group of his supporters keeps growing . (See map on left). The kayak would break into many pieces. So, wearing only his harness, Doba exited the cabin, crawled across the bucking deck with a spare sea anchor attached to a rope, tied the rope to his kayak and threw the anchor off the stern. Water trapped in Olos storage lockers short-circuited the electric desalinator. Yet, at least for me, the river was magic calm, mysterious and alive. Doba with Olo, the kayak he used to cross the North Atlantic in 2017. Then he sat down and fell asleep.. Aleksander Doba, a 64-year-old native of Poland, took off from Dakar, capital of the west African nation of Senegal, back on Oct. 26. While the distance does not compare with the record for the longest ocean-crossing by kayak, held by Poland's Aleksander Doba for a 6558-kilometre journey from Portugal to Florida via Bermuda, the Tasman Sea is notorious for its unpredictable, difficult weather conditions. From what we gather, he was euphoric to reach the summit. Explore. This was not Dobas first transatlantic crossing in OLO. In mid-September 2013, Doba still did not possess all the gear he wanted to take on his trip. Touch device users, explore by touch or . The ships captain was hesitant to let the disheveled man back into the ocean alone. After the transition, as the Poles call their countrys change to a democratic government in the early 1990s, Dobas trips became more extreme. There were small rivers, and we were squeezing through the bushes., Freed from the ballast of his sons, Doba started setting goals for himself: surpass the record of the greatest number of days paddled by a Polish man in a single year (108); kayak the longest possible route in Poland (1,189 kilometers). This is Gabis Pacific!, Later that afternoon, Bartek, the couples older son, stopped by the apartment with his two elementary-school-age daughters. The most serious trouble came for Doba when he hit a storm that lasted two days. [4][17] With his wife Gabriela he had two sons: Bartomiej and Czesaw. One of the last people to see Mr. Doba alive was a Polish climber named Boguslaw Wawrzyniak, who was also summiting Kilimanjaro that day. This is the only one thing you can do.. A breaking wave can do whatever it wants to a kayak. There was no engineering Olo for this. It was like my wishes came true. His skin was bronzed and weathered, his beard long and tangled, but the 67-year-old's mood was upbeat as he raised his arms in triumph after a remarkable crossing that spanned 5,400 miles. He kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean three times, the last time in 2017, when he was 70. Its good?. Three years later in 2013 he crossed the . So far I dont plan. Then he added: But I do like to sail.. Watch. A crisis, in Dobas worldview, is an opportunity for triumph. Still, Doba had no reason to plot a trip across the Atlantic . Her department grew to 100 people from five. Four days later, after capsizing repeatedly, Doba finally cleared the Sandy Hook peninsula and left lower New York Bay. Id never seen him like that. Doba's wizened but muscular frame and ancient, friendly face became familiar not just to the adventure world but to mainstream audiences when he kayaked across the Atlantic in . He communed with the turtles, whose shells he tapped while they swam alongside him to make sure they were alive, and the birds, who landed on Olo for a rest and often entered his cabin and did not want to leave. This time he would paddle from west to east, from New York to Lisbon where he would celebrate his 70th birthday after having spent . Doba with Mr. Olek, the kayak he uses on rivers locally. As a young man in Communist Poland, he had joined a local kayaking club, and he took to the sport avidly. When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. A Polish grandfather on Sunday completed his third solo trans-Atlantic kayak crossing, arriving on the French coast 111 days after dipping his paddle into the waters off the US state of New Jersey. Only one person had ever crossed the Atlantic in a kayak using solely muscle power, and he traveled island to island, from Newfoundland to Ireland. Even in seemingly reasonable conditions, rogue waves can cause havoc. The tool he used to accomplish this was a sea anchor, basically a parachute, secured to the stern of the kayak with a rope, that he set underwater to increase drag. Joakim Eskildsen is a Danish photographer based outside Berlin. NYTimes.com no longer supports Internet Explorer 9 or earlier. He put on a clean red-and-white shirt, the colors of the Polish flag, and lay down on the grass. As he braced for his life, the rope tethering his sea anchor (the only thing keeping his kayak stable) broke off. I dont know how I ended up here. The soldiers told Doba he had broken so many laws that they didnt know how to charge him. Doba didnt begin kayaking until the age of 34 and didnt train physically for the journey. He is a family man, whose positive attitude to life is contagious. On the warmer part of the Atlantic Ocean, flying fish were a big, unexpected attraction. Along with jars of his wifes plum jam, he subsisted on freeze-dried goulash and porridge, chocolate bars and homemade wine. But so what? Aleksander Doba (9 September 1946 22 February 2021) was a Polish kayaker known primarily for his long voyages crossing oceans. In 2010 and again in 2013 he kayaked across the Atlantic Ocean. They are falling, falling a catastrophe is about to happen. I never expected it would be so big, she said. However, in Brazil, while running the Amazon in my kayak in 2011, I survived two bouts of rogues with firearms and machetes. A sea kayak or touring kayak is a kayak developed for the sport of paddling on open waters of lakes, bays, and the ocean. Or the afternoon, a week later, on that same river, when he succumbed to the temptation of eating pancakes, tomato soup and rice at the Milk Bar restaurant when he should have been at his campsite, by his kayak, eating cold canned goulash in order to condition his body for arctic temperatures. He intended to keep muscle tone in his legs by swimming, but he had to abort that plan because his body in the water attracted sharks. The first person in the world to paddle from Europe to America in a kayak across the Atlantic Ocean's widest point, Aleksander Doba also holds the record for the number of days (142) spent in a kayak in the ocean. Previous Story: 8.31.17. F. Pinterest. I was infected with a virus.. On it, he has written the names of rivers he has paddled. Aleksander Doba crossed the Atlantic solo by the longest route, unaided and without a sail. His desire to conquer the sea grew from an innocent idea that gradually consumed him: He had kayaked everything else, so why not the Atlantic Ocean? I was not sure if they would leave me alive. It was accomplished in a 7-meter sea kayak and set a record for the longest open-water crossing ever undertaken by a kayaker, at roughly 99 days (the previous longest kayak crossing belonged to Peter Bray who traveled from Newfoundland to Ireland in 2001 and took over 76 days, relying on muscle-power only and no sail). Kayak fishing became very popular during the recession of around 2008-2010 when gas prices were soaring and recreational boating was becoming too expensive for . Boat Design Net does not necessarily endorse nor share the view of each individual post. Subscribe. Medicine! she said. I was the one who would have to pay! he says. [14], On September 3, 2017, Doba completed his third solo transatlantic kayak trip when he kayaked into a port in Le Conquet, France from Barnegat Bay, New Jersey in May 2017. kontakt: aleksanderdoba@gmail.com It looks straight out of a dystopian young-adult novel in which the state is intent on creating little gray men. Sketch in hand, Doba drove from Police to Szczecin, the regional capital, and approached a yacht-builder named Andrzej Arminski. Aleksander Doba, a 74-year-old retired engineer with a thick white beard and a piercing gaze, was a popular figure in Poland. His skin looks 71. He was assaulted by hailstorms of flying fish. He then reached Acara at 17:50 local time (99 days, 6 h, 20 min). Rowers whove paddled the Atlantic an easier proposition because rowing allows a person to recruit leg and back muscles have strapped themselves to the floors of their cabins to avoid being bounced around during storms and concussed, or worse. I know you will not jump. And the Polish man jumps., Wojciechowska looked at me squarely, to make sure I understood. What most of us experience as suffering he repurposes as contrarian self-determination, and that gives him an existential thrill. I was in a pickle! To avoid the nightmare of quiet conformity, Doba told me he said to his mother-in-law, This is a good soup! Through the ocean. A storm had damaged his rudder. When he couldnt sleep, because of the unrelenting stuffiness of his cabin and the waves crashing through the portal onto his head, Doba thought about his wife, children and his young granddaughter. If you arent willing to suffer, you can do nothing. Can we bring a species back from the brink? In October 2010, Doba voyaged across the Atlantic Ocean by kayak, from Senegal to Brazil and completed his trip in February 2011. He found a piece of grass to end his trip as to him the . Anyone can read what you share. But I was my own little speck in the vast universe. [10], After resting there, he initially planned to paddle another 6,000 kilometers north along the shorelines of the Americas to Washington, D.C.[12] However, he eventually decided to transport his transatlantic kayak to Peru instead and embarked on a journey down the Amazon River but after being attacked and robbed twice in Brazil he had to quit. His mean speed was 2.26km/h, and he averaged 54km per 24 hours, with a maximum 24hour distance of 126.5km. She threatened divorce. She is also co-author of The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After, which will be published next month. But Mr. Doba had tested the limits of possibility during his two previous Atlantic crossings. Trans-Atlantic kayaker Aleksander Doba, 67, was 110 nautical miles southwest of Bermuda on Wednesday [Feb 19], paddling towards the island to affect repairs to the rudder of his kayak. Gabriela, she says, was to be honest, a little pissed that Doba was going again. Polish Kayaker Is Paddling Across the Atlantic for the Third Time 69-year-old Aleksander Doba left New York on Sunday in a kayak bound for Portugal. Me, fine, Mr. Doba shouted in English to the ships crew, giving a thumbs-up. X The brain is removed from the process. Alone at sea without his hearing aids, Doba joked, he grew so disoriented that he started shouting at himself so that I could hear. (Doba is fairly deaf but didnt bring the aids along because theyre expensive and not waterproof, and there was no one to talk to anyway.) Sean Dudley. The 'extreme cruelty' around the global trade in frog legs, What does cancer smell like? In truth, my own trip had not been as peaceful as Id hoped. I am only 67 years young! Dobas apartment building is a five-story cube of blank concrete, with blank concrete stairwells. GitHub export from English Wikipedia. sport. Doba started talking about his second trans-Atlantic trip a few days after he returned from the first. Doba flew back to Poland; returned to his hometown, Police, in the countrys northwest, where he had been managing maintenance and repairs at an enormous chemical factory; and swore off kayaking with a partner ever again. The biggest piece of junk floating in the water was a shattered, plastic 200-liter trash barrel. On the morning of Feb. 22, he reached Kilimanjaros summit with two guides. . Doba has a deep, almost performance-art-like sense of this. But storms and equipment failure threw Doba off course, tacking an additional 1,300 miles and two months onto a journey that already would have broken the record for the longest ever solo kayaking voyage. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. Along with jars of his wife's plum jam, he subsisted on freeze-dried goulash and porridge, chocolate bars . If . Transatlantic crossings are passages of passengers and cargo across the Atlantic Ocean between Europe or Africa and the Americas. A mans world? And he began preparing to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, an expedition that had long been on his bucket list. He arrived at New Smyrna Beach, Florida on April 19, 2014. The trip could have easily ended five days earlier, when Doba was just a few hundred feet off the British coast. Three times, he paddled 200 to 300 miles, only to get pushed back by the winds and currents. The 70-Year-Old Master Kayaker His clothes, permeated with salt, refused to dry. During his voyages he admired the majesty of the sea and relished wonders that he alone was privy to. He tried to fix it and failed. ) so that she could compare it with the condition of her children upon their return. Doba alerted Chmielinski, who alerted Gabriela who didnt really want to know anything about how the trip was going. My flu lingered. For a while the crossing was drama-free. Chmielinski also had been coordinating Dobas logistics. But by katorga, Doba does not mean an activity he does not wish to do. I came very close to the line of my possibility and human possibility, he told The Times. Doba describes the tedium as a form of dementia: Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of repetitions. During a storm, the water below the oceans surface stays relatively still; what moves radically are the waves. But Mr. Doba hungered to cross an ocean so vast that it seemed infinite, and he began plotting to kayak the Atlantic. Arminski, the boatbuilder, spent many hours trying to argue Doba out of it. It's unique design is compromise between safety during extreme ocean challenge, and feeling that it should be close to spirit of kayaking. The weather report was bad, but Chmielinski had arranged for a lot of press, and an entourage of kayakers had come to paddle out with Doba a ways, and he felt he had a duty to them. I do not want to be a little gray man. This is a common expression in Poland and a good motto for us all. It is basically an avalanche of water. He was, by then, 90 percent of the way across the ocean but had spent the last six weeks paddling in circles in the Bermuda Triangle, trapped by wind and currents. Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic SocietyCopyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. Do you know how fast they go? he said. [3], Doba first tried kayaking at age 34 on a trip organised by the company he was working for. By ELIZABETH WEILPhotographs by JOAKIM ESKILDSEN You can sit and die. Neither Gabriela nor Bartek took him to the airport. The next time I visited, my mother-in-law did not prepare that soup. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Those were very, very hard times for both of us. His mother, Eugenia (Ilijna) Doba, was a homemaker. Doba maintains that his need to cross the Atlantic in a kayak did not originate within him. Then the AA batteries for his SPOT personal tracking device failed, and the retired engineer had to rig a new, delicate connection using AAAs. Aleksander Doba, famous Polish traveler, died on 8th of February during his expedition to Kilimanjaro. He is paddling for New Smyrna Beach, Florida, 4,700 nautical miles away. Chmielinski and others came up with what Doba describes as exotic and expensive methods of rescue. (He ate all the meat options first.) Doba and his wife, Gabriela, at home in Police. When he saw shooting stars at night, he made wishes that, he said, later came true. Meet the man who solo kayaked the Atlantic Ocean - three times. Aleksander Doba. Three weeks later, he reached Florida. F. When he gave me a last hug, maybe he didnt cry, but I saw his eyes, Bartek said. Still, the trip was perfect. In 2017 he completed an eastward kayaking trip across . He was pummeled again by wind and waves. ' laughs intrepid kayaker Aleksander Doba. He was unaccustomed to wearing pants. "Video: People's Choice Adventurer of the Year Aleksander Doba", "Aleksander Doba Completes His Third Atlantic Crossing in a Kayak", "Police. He arrived in Tanzania last month. Adventurer of 2015 ! An elementary school honored him with a statue in his scruffy, bearded likeness. The majority of Several books have been written about his adventures, including three written by Doba himself.[21]. These animals can sniff it out. He held a marine yacht skipper certificate. Better than sushi.). It was his 3rd crossing without a sail. National Geographic . Someone had forgotten to fund the prepaid credit card that covered the bill. Can we bring a species back from the brink?, Video Story, Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, Copyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. UPDATE: The votes are inmore than 521,000 of them, more than ever beforeand we have a winner. Dobas electric desalinator broke, as it did before, and he had to spend several hours a day manually pumping seawater through an extremely fine filter to produce the five to nine liters of fresh water he needed to stay hydrated and prepare his freeze-dried food. I joked with Gabriela that this was her Atlantic. He took us on long trips, only him and us both, in the middle of nowhere, and we hated that, Bartek recalled. His kayak,I rowed varsity crew in highschool and got into kayaking and poling in college. Aleksander doba. He later spent 100 days paddling the circumference of the Baltic Sea. Imagine a plane the size of a kayak hitting turbulence, but in water rather than air; at sea level, water is hundreds of times denser. Behind me, steering us among the 60 other kayakers and dozens of fallen trees, Doba fidgeted in his seat, like an ADHD kid in class. "It is with profound regret that we announce the death of the great kayaker Alesander Doba on February 22. Doba, for now, has a carefully constructed answer. (Photo: Iwona) A 12,417 kilometer journey between Lisbon and Florida. Nobody cares if you cross the Atlantic in a kayak. This time Dobas trip was far more successful, which is not to say it was pleasant. [2], Doba has also paddled in a kayak with others around the Baltic Sea (in 1999, 80 days, 4227km), from Police to Narvik (in 2000, 101 days, 5369km) and around Lake Baikal (in 2009, 41 days, 2000km). Sadly, he passed away this week while climbing Kilimanjaro. Reviews, News & Stories Paddling Buyer's Guide Paddling Trip Guide. Today. In the early 1970s, Mr. Doba graduated from Poznan University of Technology, where he studied mechanical engineering. The air that day hovered around 40 degrees about 4 degrees Celsius. All rights reserved, Aleskander Doba is our 2015 People's Choice Adventurer of the Year. The two voyages were the longest open-water kayak voyages ever made. He kept no schedule. When making potentially dangerous or financial decisions, always employ and consult appropriate professionals. At 67 years old, a Polish kayaker completes the longest open-water kayaking expedition across the Atlantic in history. To prove themselves, Polish people will endure everything. El polaco Aleksander Doba, que se convirti en la primera persona en cruzar el ocano Atlntico en kayak y en solitario a los 65 aos de edad, falleci el . Aleksander Ludwik Doba was born on Sept. 9, 1946, in Swarzedz, Poland. . Actualizado a 24/02/2021 12:40 CET. He was famous for his long voyages crossing oceans and seas. [2] However, in general, from my very low point of observation, the ocean looked clean. Which travel companies promote harmful wildlife activities? Hitting the Atlantic ocean the following day, he had waited almost a year for another chance to continue his Third Transatlantic Kayak Expedition, which began on May 29, 2016 . Doba drifted around for days eating freeze-dried goulash and chocolate bars. Aleksander Doba is a Polish traveler and explorer. For Aleksander Doba, pitting himself against the wide-open sea storms, sunstroke, monotony, hunger and loneliness is a way to feel alive in old age. The groundbreaking promise of cellular housekeeping. The new year once started in Marchhere's why, Jimmy Carter on the greatest challenges of the 21st century, This ancient Greek warship ruled the Mediterranean, How cosmic rays helped find a tunnel in Egypt's Great Pyramid, Who first rode horses? Chmielinski interpreted this communication blackout as a sign that Doba was deeply despairing, perhaps because he was alone again after being with the crew on Baltic Light, perhaps because, now that he had accepted help, he worried that he would not earn a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for kayaking solo from continent to continent unsupported. Then Doba sketched out a design for a new boat that could make the trip. Alexander Doba returns to the Atlantic. Then the devil says to the Frenchman, You must jump. The Frenchman says, What does this mean?. Finally, the kayaks rudder snapped in the storm, and, unable to battle against the trade winds with a broken rudder, Doba was forced to retreat to Bermuda to have his boat repaired. [1] In 2017 he completed an eastward kayaking trip across the Atlantic. For a while, once again, on this second expedition, all was smooth. You can be made small by life or rage against it. Doba did finally accept help two weeks later. (Very fine, he said. I am generally physically active, ride a bike, work in my garden, and enjoy walking.. Aleksander "Olek" Doba, a retired engineer from Poland, left Lisbon, Portugal, in his kayak on October 5, 2013. People ask me how old I am, and I say, I am not old! Not according to biology or history. Three times. But the inside of the apartment feels much better: shoes in the entrance hall; pencil marks of grandchildrens heights in the kitchen door jamb; atlases, kayaking trophies and snow globes of family photos in the living room. In the spring of 2017, he began his third trans-Atlantic crossing the one that garnered the most media attention when he paddled out from New Jersey. He did not want to be saved, so he waved the Greeks off. His odyssey concluded that September when he paddled into the port in Le Conquet, France. Contribute to chinapedia/wikipedia.en development by creating an account on GitHub. Aleksander Doba in the Atlantic before arriving in Florida in April 2014.
